Gonzo Green

[Image: Preflooded Wetlands by Liam Young and Darryl Chen].

Unexpectedly apropos of the previous post, Liam Young of Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today, together with Darryl Chen, has created a series of quite beautiful images called “Postcards from a Green Future” – one of which, seen above, uses the Maunsell Sea Forts as a gantried foundation for suburban anti-flood design in an idyllic southeast England.

The entire suite of images is almost farcically green – it’s sustainability redone as Grand Guignol. These speculative scenes of “a green future” show us an over-the-top, solar-powered utopia of detached single-family houses and wind turbines, woven together with light rail and renewable energy technologies; it’s an Eden of sprawl spreading out into London’s most distant scattered cityscape.

[Image: Waste and Biogas and Permacultural Hinterland by Liam Young and Darryl Chen].

But the images also betray an interest in the murky borders between the synthetic and the geological, the organic and the mass-produced. What if those verdant fields of green out there are actually cloned and genetically-modified? What if that well-trimmed nature is simply an exhibition on display?

[Image: Primordial Garden Sanctuary and Incarceration Tower by Liam Young and Darryl Chen].

You can read about the entire project in new four-part series of blog posts over at Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today – just go to the righthand column (“Slow Thoughts”) and keep scrolling down…

It's fascinating how much artificiality it takes to achieve greenness in this utopia.. Ultimately too human-centric to be trustworthy. While all human endeavour will invariably aim at improving human life, having more abstract ideals (truth, freedom) often help to prevent hubris and an ultimate fall. Still, a well-imagined and very interesting hypothetical.

These are beautiful images! I am amazed at how much life will have to change if we indeed want to have a green future. Or want to continue living with the climate changes that will come while we try to get started green living.

I think with living in a society based on oil consumption, we've been stuck for several decades in this same mode, even though science and science fiction have tried to get us motivated and moving forward.